


Haven’t I Locked Up My Failure, Wouldn’t I Be Last to See

by theshipsfirstmate



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, post-5x03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-23
Updated: 2016-10-23
Packaged: 2018-08-24 06:51:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8361793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theshipsfirstmate/pseuds/theshipsfirstmate
Summary: post-5x03. Because they’re both in the bunker and they’re both going through it.
“I know it’s not fair to ask, I know that,” she admits, pulling back slightly to look in his eyes, trying to mask her plea as a half-apology. She’s never made him promise anything like this before. “But if things were fair, we’d be picking china patterns right now.”





	

_Title from “[8 (circle)](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DpPsBFPX_yU4&t=ZmY4MzBmZTVlOGFiODgzMTEzNzY1NjFkODFkNzAwZTM1YjJhNzhmYSxzZGdhbGtEaA%3D%3D&b=t%3AiAw4tJIAalN1OvhWtUFPsQ&m=1)” by Bon Iver, because this album is still ruling my life._

**Haven’t I Locked Up My Failure, Wouldn’t I Be Last to See**

He stands in the garage, stock still like a statue, for what might be hours. Lyla must sneak herself out at some point. She can’t kick the old ARGUS habits, tending to appear from thin air more often than she knocks. It’s OK. It works for them. He doesn’t see her as much as he should, though, and it seems it’s always for something like this.

Oliver’s mind is racing, turning this latest impossible objective over and over in his brain, looking for an entry point. Breaking into a military prison is high risk, even for him, and he doesn’t really have much of idea on where to start. The only thing he knows for certain is that there’s no choice but to try. John would do the same for him. He has, in fact, several times over.

He’s weighing whether or not to call Felicity right away, to get her brain working as his fumbles through a fog of emotions – the most dominant being some kind of furious, loyal vengeance – but then he walks out to the central hub of the bunker, and there she is. She’s standing in front of her computers, staring up at one of the screens, looking as shell-shocked as he feels.

She actually looks worse, Oliver notices as his pace quickens to reach her side. She looks terrified and devastated all at once, though he can tell by the set of her spine that she’s trying desperately to hold it together. It’s like the atmosphere’s been sucked from the room, the way the air leaves his lungs in one asphyxiating rush.

“Felicity?” He’s close enough to touch her now, and only just conscious enough to stop himself short of the impulse. “What’s wrong?”

She doesn’t speak, but heaves in a deep, shuddering breath that shakes her shoulders violently. He’s close enough now to see, as she exhales, that she’s trembling.

Something clangs to the floor behind him, the extraneous proof that he still, despite years of trying and months of separation, has a severe case of tunnel vision when it comes to her; he didn’t even realize they weren’t alone. He turns to see Rene lifting the sparring dummy back upright with a face like a guilty puppy, as Evelyn muffles a nervous laugh into the back of her hand.

“Can you guys clear out for the night?” He hears his tone, knows he might regret it later, but right now he has a singular focus. Nothing else matters in this moment beyond getting Felicity to look at him.

“Come on Evy,” Rene grumbles as the pair head for the elevator. “Let’s give Mom and Dad some alone time.”

Oliver grimaces, squeezing his eyes shut tight and hoping to any higher power that Felicity didn’t hear, but she curls in on herself tighter, turning even further away from him. This time, he can’t stop himself, his hand instinctively reaches out to sooth, skimming along her bare shoulder, squeezing gently as his fingers trace over her clavicle.

_Mom and Dad._ Maybe in another lifetime, another timeline. He has a flash of her in a wedding dress and thinks, not for the first time, how unfair this life has been, to give him that image to carry around long after she gave him his mother’s ring back.

Felicity doesn’t immediately pull away from his touch, and he’s not prepared for the rush of relief that overcomes him, not ready to admit that he was prepared, almost waiting for her to recoil. The tension radiating off her is palpable, though, and he finally remembers to glance at the screen to see what’s got her so upset.

It’s a street-view map of what must be Havenrock, shortly after the blast. Miles of rubble, devastation in every direction. The search window is trained on a specific address, and Oliver knows what her confession will be before the sandpaper words ever grate past her lips.

“I told Rory,” Felicity says softly, still staring straight ahead. “I told him that I…that I’m the one who killed his family.”

“You’re not,” Oliver insists, sharp as he can muster, though he knows she won’t buy it this time any more than the last. “Damien Darhk launched those bombs.”

“And I sent one right to his front yard.” She forces the words out like they hurt her physically, and he understands, from experience, that they might.

“ _Felicity_ …”

“It doesn’t matter how many were saved if I have to look him in the eye everyday,” she continues before he can get another word in, finally turning to face him as her voice builds to a shaky crescendo. “Don’t you get that? It doesn’t matter!”

The move brushes his hand from her shoulder and their physical connection is severed just as she attempts to widen the emotional fault. She’s crumbling to pieces right in front of him, slipping through his fingers like a sandcastle turning back to dust. “You’re _wrong_ ,” Oliver tells her again.

She lowers into her desk chair, hanging her head on a sob, looking so small and defeated that he can’t help but sink to a knee next to her, taking her hand in one of his and tangling their fingers together.

With his other hand, Oliver reaches into a nearby desk drawer, pulling out the small, magnetized container he stashed for safekeeping. She gasps sharply as he slides it open, and he suddenly realizes what this might look like, remembers with catastrophic clarity the last time he was on his knee before her. He jerks back, pulling his hand away from hers to quickly hold up the flash drive that’s inside the thin metal case.

“Sorry, I just…I wasn’t going to tell you about this yet, but…” He trails off, giving himself one last second to reconsider, because there’s a feeling burrowing into his gut that this decision will change everything. Then he hands the drive over. “There’s something you need to see.”

* * *

She should be home by now. She should have been gone hours ago, Billy was supposed to meet her at the loft for dinner. He’s probably been trying to call.

But she couldn’t speak, couldn’t even really move until Oliver came out and found her frozen, so she’s not exactly sure how she would go about fooling the new man in her life on this particular night. There’s so much Felicity can’t tell him, so much that stays stuck in her throat like the kind of lump that wells up when you’re about to cry.

She never cries in front of him, either.

Sobbing with Oliver in the bunker, however, feels familiar enough to be almost humiliating. But she can’t seem to stop herself from weeping for Rory, for his family, his city, and for the part she played in the young hero’s origin story.

She dabs at what’s left of her mascara as she plugs in the flash drive he handed her. There’s not much on it, just a folder marked “ICE” and a massive encoded image file called “Map.” He points to the latter. “That one. Open that up?”

Felicity flips the image to the big screen as she decodes it quickly and furrows her brow. It’s a highly detailed map of the world, nearly military in design, with bright green dots scattered across the continents.

“It’s an ARGUS map,” Oliver explains, as her stomach drops out, “marked with each of the major cities that the NATO alliance nukes were targeted towards.”

Now she remembers. She remembers working across this map with her father, remembers their frantic race against time, the devastating results. She locates the dot that marks Monument Point in seconds, mentally calculating the mileage and estimated speeds for what must be the millionth time, wondering once again if she could have gotten the bomb to the ocean, instead.

“You saved the world, Felicity.” Oliver’s voice sounds far away, but his hands land hesitantly on her shoulders and bring her back to the present, pulling her out of her recurring, waking nightmare. “Rory lost his family, but hundreds of thousands of other children didn’t, because of you. Millions of people lived, because of you.”

It’s overwhelming, what he does for her. It always is. “ _Thank you._ ” It comes out like a whisper and it’s all she can muster, reaching up to grasp his hands.

“You’re a _hero_ ,” he adds. “I want you to always, always remember that. No matter what.”

Something about the tone of his voice when he says those words, the tension she can feel in his grasp, triggers an uneasy feeling, and Felicity remembers that there’s more on the flash drive, tabbing backwards to the other folder, even as Oliver’s fingers tighten around the hand he’s still holding.

Inside the “ICE” folder is another folder marked “Legal” and four video files of similar size: “To William.mov,” “To Thea.mov,” “To John.mov,” and – her stomach plummets – “For Felicity.mov.”

“What are these?” Her question is quiet with something like fury, and heavy with dread, because she’s fairly certain she already knows his answer. “Why are you giving these to me?”

“Lyla says John’s in trouble.” She’s not sure what she was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t that. Her heart instantly aches for her friend, another good man swallowed whole by his guilt. “They’re framing him, they’ve got him locked up in a military prison, we’ve got to…”

In a different kind of life, she wouldn’t even know how to complete that sentence. In this one, she’s almost giddy to have an focus to burn through her grief, turning back to the computer and pulling up windows to start worming her way into the DoD databases. “The new team’s not ready for this.”

“I know.” He answers like he’s already thought the whole thing through. “I’m not going to ask them to come. But I am going to tell them where I’m going, what the plan is. Leave the decision up to them.”

Felicity’s half-listening because she’s almost through to Digg’s files already, fingers flying frantically over the keys. Her adrenaline’s racing, and she’s grateful for the distraction, that’s why she tells herself she doesn’t hear Oliver’s first few attempts to bring her back into the real world.

“Felicity, we don’t have to start right now. You should… _Felicity_ …” She senses him behind her, but it’s not until he touches her shoulder again that she bubbles over, practically jumping up from her seat, whirling around to face him and following him step-for-step when he backs up in surprise. She reaches up to take his face in her hands and he follows without hesitation, ducking down to press his forehead to hers.

The feeling of _Oliver_ , warm and close, triggers something inside she hasn’t allowed herself to fully realize until this moment, a desperate longing for him that still exists in the marrow of her bones. She shuts her eyes tight against the torrent of tears that are threatening to flow again, taking in a deep, shuddering breath that’s heavy with his familiar scent.

“I have to keep you safe.” She tries to explain how, even after five years, the thought of him putting himself in danger makes her almost physically ill. Those are the words that come out. “I will. And I’ll keep your stupid goodbye videos safe too, because that’s what I do.”

They both crack cautious, watery smiles in spite of themselves, in spite of this life that they lead, and she feels a rush of affection that she’s not brave enough to try and label more specifically. But that feeling churns its way back to nervous dread soon enough, it always does.

It isn’t working that well, this new normal of theirs. She hasn’t allowed herself too much time to admit it, or think about why. They spend their nights together before going home separately, but for Felicity, one of the only bright spots is that they’re still in each other’s lives. She hasn’t thought much beyond that, until now.

“We’ll get John back, we’ll do it together,” she promises him fiercely, blindly. “But you are not, under any circumstances, allowed to die trying, OK?”

It was never an option, walking away from him or the work, not even when the breakup was fresh and her heart was still tender. It still isn’t.  _Not a chance._

“I know it’s not fair to ask, I know that,” she admits, pulling back slightly to look in his eyes, trying to mask her plea as a half-apology. She’s never made him promise anything like this before. “But if things were fair, we’d be picking china patterns right now.”

Those words cut deeper than she intends; when he flinches, she can feel it. She drops her hands from his face, but Oliver bounces back quickly, catching them as they drop to her sides and holding on tight.

“If things were fair,” he echoes, “I’d promise to always come home to you.” He’s still close enough to kiss her, but she’s pretty sure he won’t. She’s surprised how badly she wants him to. Or maybe she isn’t.

“I’d take you around the world again, to each of the cities on that map.” Her breath hitches against her will. “I’d show you all the good you’ve done, all the people you saved. Just like you saved me.”

“If things were fair.” Oliver’s blue eyes twinkle back at her, and Felicity realizes that she can still sees a lifetime in their depths. He repeats her words back to her, voice soft and strong. “If things were fair.”

He’s hers if she wants him, still, that’s one of the only things she’s certain of in this whole unknowable world. And it’s so hard not to want him when he’s looking into her eyes like he does.

It’s so hard not to tell him she’s still in love with him. But things aren’t fair.


End file.
